Letters
To the Editor:
In his interview with Helen
Frankenthaler
(PR
2 1994), Hilton
Kramer brought up the barrage of
predictions, from all over the art
world, of the coming demise of
abstract painting. He recalled a
panel discussion which had taken
place one evening at the 8th
Street Artists' Club on "New
Figurative Painting:"
. .. the reason why that evening
was so memorable was the statment
that Alfred Barr made.... Alfred was,
I think, enchanted with Larry Rivers's
painting of Washington crossing the
Delaware.... I don 't think that
Alfred quite understood the Rivers
painting was a kind of camp play on
th e famous nineteen th-cen tu ry
American painting of the same sub–
ject.* That is, he certainly knew it was
based on the earlier painting, but I
don't think he quite understood the
attitude toward the original that the
Rivers painting displayed. Alfred said
that evening that he thought that ab–
stract painting was now coming to an
end and that th e next phase of
American painting would be, like the
Rivers painting, in the direction of a
revival of history painting.
l
*Washingron Crossing the Delaware
by
Emanuel Leutze]
Alfred Barr, then Director of
MOMA, didn't understand that
my painting "was a kind of camp
... " because he and I saw each
other a lot in those days, and in
the months preceding MOMA 's
purchase of the work I proudly
expressed many times to Alfred
that painting "G.W.C.T.D" was
my "getting into the ring" with
Tolstoy. I had just read
War and
Peace,
and it had inspired me, in
my own pompous and deadly se–
rious way, to do a visual work of
art based on a memorable event in
American history, the way
War
and Peace
was built on a memo–
rable event in Russian history, the
Napoleonic invasion. Long before
I became aware of Leutze's
painting, that iconographic image
of American history - George
Washington crossing the Delaware
- was etched into my brain. I
don't remember ever stopping to
look at Leutze's painting at the
Metropolitan.
For Hilton to think a recent
escapee from the Bronx like me
could have, by his late twenties,
taken camp as part of his esthetic
is a serious misreading of my artis–
tic sophistication. "Camp" didn't
make its way as an esthetic into
art until long after I painted
"G.W.C.T.D." I was also explicit
about what I was doing in the
painting in my autobiography,
VVhat Did I Do?
I'm not sure why
this rumor passing for fact bothers
me. But while I can't concentrate
on "the beautiful" in art, I do feel
more comfortable with the truth
in this matter.
Larry Rivers
Southampton, NY
